For every dollar in assets owned by whites in the United States, blacks own less than a nickel, a racial divide that is wider than South Africa’s at any point during the apartheid era.

The median net worth for black households is $4,955, or about 4.5 percent of whites’ median household wealth, which was $110,729 in 2010, according to Census data. Racial inequality in apartheid South Africa reached its zenith in 1970 when black households’ median net worth represented 6.8 percent of whites’, according to an analysis of government data by Sampie Terreblanche, professor emeritus of economics at Stellenbosch University.

I checked Edward Wolff’s calculations from the 2010 SCF (which differ from the official SCF numbers because Wolff doesn’t think it’s correct to count car value as wealth). In Wolff’s figures, you will find Jeter’s median black wealth figure of $4.9k, but the median white wealth figure is $97k, not the $110.7k figure Jeter provides. So the mystery remains.

Seeing as I was on the prowl for the figures anyways, I decided I might as well just whip some up myself. Using the 2010 SCF microdata, including the judgments it makes about what constitutes net worth, I calculated the following.

Of course, there are population differences between the groups. In this final graph I divide each race’s share of the overall wealth by its share of the overall population. If wealth were evenly distributed among racial groups, all the bars would line up at 1. Bars above 1 indicate that the racial group has a greater share of the nation’s wealth than its share of the population. Bars below 1 indicate the racial group has a lesser share of the nation’s wealth than its share of the population.

Whites’ share of the nation’s wealth is 31 percent greater than their share of the nation’s population. Blacks’ share of the nation’s wealth is 80 percent less than their share of the population. That is, to bring their share of the wealth in line with their share of the population, you’d need to increase black wealth five-fold. Hispanics’ share of the nation’s wealth is 72 percent less than their share of the population. To bring their share of the wealth in line with their share of the population, you’d need to increase it by 3.5x.